A discussion with Max Keiser on my new book The Bubble and Beyond.
Veblen’s Institutionalist Elaboration of Rent Theory

Michael Hudson's new book The Bubble and Beyond has just been released and can be purchased here. Speech given at the Veblen, Capitalism and Possibilities for a Rational Economic Order Conference, Istanbul, Turkey, June 6th, 2012 Simon Patten recalled in 1912 that his generation of American economists – most of whom studied in Germany in the 1870s – were taught that John Stuart Mill’s 1848 Principles of Political Economy was the high-water mark of classical thought. However, Mill’s reformist philosophy turned out to be “not a goal but a half-way house” toward the Progressive Era’s reforms. Mill was “a thinker becoming a socialist without seeing what the change really meant,” Patten concluded. “The Nineteenth Century epoch ends not with the theories of Mill but with the more logical systems of Karl Marx ...
The Bubble and Beyond
Purchase the new paperback edition here. Kindle. Michael Hudson's new book The Bubble & Beyond is vital for those vying to make sense of the economic quicksand global policy makers find themselves in. He ties a thread between the big issues of our times - underwater housing, money market manipulations and lifetime debt - concerns that appear too difficult for the world's mainstream economists. Hudson does this by looking at the systemic causes of inequality, complexity and economic despair. The book traces how industrial capitalism has turned into finance capitalism. The finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sector has emerged to create “balance sheet wealth” not by new tangible investment and employment, but financially in the form of debt leveraging and rent-extraction. Decision making is clouded by an economic system that favors ...
The Weaponization of Economic Theory
Europe’s three needs: a debt write-down, a real central bank, and a more efficient tax system Brussels Talk, Madariaga College, Governing Globalisation in a World Economy in Transition, June 27, 2012 What can Europe learn from the United States? First, the United States – like Canada, England and China – have central banks that do what central banks outside of Europe were created to do: finance the budget deficit directly. I have found that it is hard to explain to continental Europe just how different the English-speaking countries are in this respect. There is a prejudice here that central bank financing of a domestic spending deficit by government is inflationary. This is nonsense, as demonstrated by recent U.S. experience: the largest money creation in American history has gone hand in hand ...